Clark finds her athletic home in the scrum

Published 10:39 pm, Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Joya Clark, a Scotia-Glenville graduate, recently earned a MVP award and a national title with the Norwich University women's rugby team. (Jennifer Langille)

Joya Clark, a Scotia-Glenville graduate, recently earned a MVP award and a national title with the Norwich University women's rugby team. (Jennifer Langille)

Photo: Jennifer Langille

Clark finds her athletic home in the scrum

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Joya Clark was already playing soccer and running track and cross country before she tried rugby.

In soccer, she thirsted for physicality, she says, earning a reputation of "not being nice on the field." And though she thought running might be her sport, it didn't allow her to be aggressive.

She'd played football her freshman year at Scotia-Glenville, but she couldn't get as far as she wanted on the field because she wasn't as strong as the boys.

So when she was 15 or 16, she went to Saratoga Rugby, which operates men's, women's and youth teams, to try out its girls' program.

"It felt good. It just felt natural to me. I learned a couple rules when I got there — you have to pass the ball backward. This is when you can tackle. This is when you can't," she says. "I tried a lot of sports, and they weren't perfect, and I finally found the one. I was into it, and I needed a physical sport, and that's just what I needed. I'm pretty physical for my small stature."

The 5-foot-2 junior at Norwich University was recently named MVP of the USA Rugby College 7's National Championships, winning a national title with the Cadets for the second year in a row. The team — and Clark — spent the season rambling past opponents, outscoring them 1,215 to 48 this season.

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Although Norwich, a Vermont-based private military college (Clark belongs to the civilian component), lists women's rugby as a varsity sport, it isn't treated like other major programs nationwide. In 2002-03, the NCAA classified women's rugby as an "emerging sport," which means it has 10 years to prove its popularity in order to become one of the national championship programs governed by the NCAA. In recent years, women's rowing, water polo, ice hockey and bowling rose out of "emerging sport" classification to become NCAA championship sports. Meanwhile, archery, badminton, synchronized swimming and team handball were kicked off of the list due to lack of growth.

It seems a little unfair for a sport such as rugby — a blend of skill, strategy and strength — to meet the same fate as sports that don't fit the traditional mold. Bowling gets in, but rugby, which is perhaps a stronger test of body and mind, may not.

The NCAA appears to think so, too, because it's considering amending its policies to encourage more schools to adopt women's rugby as an emerging sport (right now, the NCAA says five schools sponsor it).

Policy changes mean considering rugby 7s as an option, rather than the rugby 15s recognized by the NCAA under the emerging sport category now. Needing seven rather than 15 players to field a team could make a difference. But those changes, if approved, wouldn't happen until the summer of 2014 at the earliest, just two years before rugby 7s makes its debut at the Olympics.

"(Women's rugby is) definitely going upward in the past two years alone," Clark says. "Since I've been in school, there's been five more varsity programs added."

At Norwich, the team has paid coaches and trainers and access to the training room like any other varsity sport.

But at many colleges on both the men's and the women's side of the game — men's rugby doesn't have NCAA championship status either — it is relegated to the club level.

"I feel like you'd get a lot more coverage. That's what I want. I want us to be on ESPN, not ESPN3," says Clark, whose goal is to make the first women's rugby Olympic team. "We want to build the country in rugby. If the NCAA recognizes us, and NCAA helps us along, we will have younger girls picking it up. We need them picking it up in kindergarten like soccer. That's how we build special athletes. There's so many women that want to play a game where they get to hit each other."

And in an age when women compete as strongly as men in their respective sports, it seems like it's time to give them an equal crack at aggressive play.